Kansas City Star

MISSOURI: Death sentence for juvenile killer overturned

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that executing people who were minors when they killed was unconstitutional -- almost certainly sending the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 4-3 ruling changed the sentence of Christopher Simmons, 27, of St. Louis from execution to life without parole.

Simmons was 17 in 1993 when he broke into the home of Shirley Crook, kidnapped her, bound her and later pushed her from a bridge into the Meramec River.

Simmons told an accomplice they could get away with it because they were juveniles.

At his trial, a prosecutor argued that Simmons' youth was a good reason to execute him -- that he had too many years left to commit similar crimes.

On Tuesday, the state Supreme Court majority ruled that executing persons who were juveniles at the time of their crimes amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

The court majority extended to minors the same reasoning the U.S. Supreme Court used last year in banning the execution of people with mental disabilities.

But a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling still allows 16- and 17-year-olds to be executed.

Missouri Judge Laura Denvir Stith wrote that "this court concludes that the Supreme Court of the United States would hold that the execution of persons for crimes committed when they were under 18 years of age violates the 'evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.'"

The dissenters said no state court had the legal authority to overturn or to go out ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It is the prerogative of the United States Supreme Court, and its alone, to overrule one of its decisions," wrote Judge William Ray Price Jr.

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon said he would appeal to the nation's highest court and that it would decide the matter. Missouri law properly allows the execution of 16- and 17-year-old killers, Nixon said, "and that option should remain there for Missouri juries."

University of Missouri-Kansas City adjunct law professor Kent Gipson, a Kansas City defense lawyer not involved in the case, said no other state supreme court had made such a ruling.

It almost forces society to deal with the issue and the case, Gipson said. "It's set up perfectly to go to the United States Supreme Court."

The Missouri court's logic makes sense, Gipson said. In 1989, separate U.S. Supreme Court rulings allowed the execution of people with mental disabilities and of minors of 16 and 17. Last year the nation's high court forbade executing people with mental disabilities, citing "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."

In making that decision, the U.S. Supreme Court studied how national and international laws had changed to oppose such executions and how very rarely people with mental disabilities were executed.

On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court also cited the same kind of law changes against the execution of minors, who are also rarely executed.

Missouri has executed only one minor since 1937, the ruling states. Besides Simmons, the state has only one minor killer on death row, Gipson said, and his execution could be overturned for other reasons.

There have been 22 juvenile executions nationwide since 1973, the ruling states, with more than 80 % of them in Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma.

Gipson said the composition of the Missouri Supreme Court made the ruling possible. Democratic governors appointed the four-judge majority in the case: Stith, Richard Teitelman, Ronnie White and Michael Wolff. Republican governors appointed the three dissenters: Price, Duane Benton and Stephen Limbaugh.

Since August 2002, the court has overturned at least 9 death sentences for a variety of reasons.

Reached at her eastern Missouri home Tuesday night, Crook's older sister, Pertie Mitchell, expressed disgust at the court's ruling and said she would push for the state to appeal it.

Simmons, she said, "deserves to be executed. ... And I will feel better when he is executed, and it will happen. ... I'm very bitter, I'm very angry because it has completely torn this family up."

Mitchell said the nature of Crook's murder prevented her from forgiving Simmons. He didn't kill her in a panic, she noted, as about an hour passed from the break-in until Crook was thrown from the bridge.

"This wasn't spur of the moment," she said.

"I haven't been praying about this, because I thought the law would take care of it," she said. Now, she added, "I just pray this man will be executed."